Regulations
by cathrl
Summary: Mark's a stickler for the rules. He knows they're there for a reason, and he won't break them for his own gain, no matter how badly he'd like to. But every rule has a loophole somewhere.


This is set immediately after Resurrection and should probably have been the last chapter of it, but there was a fair gap between me writing them, so it's not really part of it. Plus it would have been a jarring change in style and genre. If you haven't read Resurrection, you might want to - this isn't going to make a great deal of sense without it.

Saccharine warning. Yup, from me. Be very afraid.

 **Regulations**

The crow mecha's pilot finally made the mistake they'd been waiting for. Tiny brought them round at the perfect angle to target the weak spot which Keyop had noticed, and Jason's first shot buried itself just behind the flying horror's head exactly in the joint between sections. For a moment time stood still, and then there was a gout of flame from the beak at the front, and the whole thing slowly tipped to somersault over and plummet on its back towards the water. No escape pods, not this time. Once, Mark would have hoped this meant they'd finally nailed Zoltar. Now he just assumed he hadn't been on board.

There was a whoop of glee from Keyop. "Stupid useless pile of junk."

"It did a fair bit of damage, though," said Princess. "Thank goodness for self-sealing oil wells. This area couldn't survive another environmental disaster."

"If the sealing systems worked," Jason said cynically.

"We can't worry about that. Someone else's problem." That was Tiny, bringing them round in a long sweeping curve over the oilfields of the Gulf of Mexico. There were five plumes of black smoke, but many, many more undamaged rigs...and, as far as Mark could see, blue-green sparkling water without the tell-tale rainbow of floating oil. They'd done extraordinarily well, despite Princess's comments. Three of the rigs had already been destroyed by the time G-Force had been briefed. The other two had been attacked as they were in transit. Once the Phoenix arrived on the scene, the crow mecha hadn't managed to spit a single missile anywhere near a civilian target.

"Commander...Mark?" Princess asked, and Mark brought his concentration back to mission protocol. Or what he hoped was still current and correct mission protocol. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Everything which mattered had gone right.

"Swan, report target destroyed and Phoenix returning to base. Owl, take us home."

He leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. It was so good to be back.

.

He was still thinking about his one massive regret as they approached ISO and the dive back to their underwater hangar. Princess. Almost a whole year he'd had when he could have told her how he felt. Taken her out to dinner. Had more than that one stolen kiss. A year when he'd deliberately torn out his heart because stepping away from his entire previous life had been less painful than trying to make something of part of it.

Nine wasted months...because he was all but certain that Anderson would make his reappointment as G-1 official at the debrief. They'd be back in the same chain of command, and that would be it. No chance to do anything at all. Relationships were banned with the sort of watertight legalese that there was no getting around no matter how badly he wanted to, or how much he knew that whether he took Princess out to dinner and called her 'girlfriend' or not wouldn't make the slightest difference to how he felt about her. No relationships, no fraternisation, nothing.

And then the germ of an idea crept into a corner of his mind and refused to go away. No matter how outrageous it seemed initially, he couldn't find anything _wrong_ with it.

But he had to act now.

* * *

"So how was your first mission back, Commander?" Jason asked as the clamps gripped the hull.

"Not my first mission back and you know it. I'm acting commander only."

"Same difference," said Tiny easily, flicking switches.

"It isn't. Once the mission's over, Jason's back in command." Not for the first time, Mark was grateful for the near-psychic ability of the Condor to second-guess where a situation was heading. Even if he didn't realise he was doing it.

"Don't worry about it," the man himself said. "Once we get to that debrief, it's all yours, permanently. And you're welcome to it."

"But not yet." Mark pushed himself to his feet, paused to find his balance (he was _so_ looking forward to being able to get up and walk without having to do a mental reset in between) and crossed to the main bank of computer controls. He ejected the mission tape and handed it very deliberately to Jason.

"Here you are, Commander. I'll follow you up. Princess, a word?"

Jason caught his eye, raised both eyebrows, and shooed Keyop out ahead of him, Tiny following close behind. Their voices faded into the distance together with the sounds of their boot heels on the deck plating, Keyop demanding to know exactly when 'mission over' was anyway and Jason explaining that it was when the tape stopped recording.

Suddenly this looked like a horrible idea. But he'd learnt the hard way not to second-guess his instincts.

"Mark?" Princess asked uncertainly from her seat. She'd been fiddling with her console, probably doing make-work ever since he'd asked her to stay. "If this is about me not being second-in-command any more, I'm fine with it. Really. I never wanted it in the first place."

"No, it isn't that." He leant against Jason's console, finding a position where some of his weight was supported while searching desperately for the right words. "You understand that I'm not commander of G-Force right now?"

She frowned. "Like Jason said, the mission ends when the tape comes out." The 'and?' was unspoken, but very obvious.

He pushed on. There had to be no ambiguity about this at all. "So where am I in your chain of command right now?"

"Nowhere. Mark, you're scaring me."

He forced himself to relax and smile reassuringly. Scaring her quite definitely wasn't the plan, however much he was scaring himself. _Now or never_ , he reminded himself. _Tomorrow will be too late. Heck, tonight will_.

"Princess, I want you to listen. Don't answer; just listen."

She raised trusting eyes to his - those huge eyes which had melted his heart the first time he'd seen her, green even through her tinted visor. She nodded silently. And he launched into the most important speech of his life.

"I'm so sorry about the past year. I was embarrassed, and miserable, and only thinking about myself, and I ran away. I didn't consider how you might be feeling. It was cruel."

Princess blinked hard, but said nothing.

"And now I'm about to be your commanding officer again. We can't have a relationship. Not one of any sort."

He'd seen this expression before. Resignation. Defeat. He pressed on.

"But I know now exactly how I feel. I've spent a year trying to ignore it, and I can't. I want to be with you. There isn't anyone else. There never has been and there never will be. I can't commit to anything, and nor can you, because that counts as a relationship. But I don't see why I can't ask a question which should make it very clear how I feel, even though you can't answer me until the war's over without getting us both court-martialled."

He took a deep breath. He'd never imagined it happening like this, in birdstyle, on the flight deck of the Phoenix, the consoles dark and silent around them. There should have been roses, and a candlelit dinner, even if it was accompanied with orange juice rather than wine. Formal clothes. Soft music.

And he should have been on one knee, with a ring to offer her. He had nothing, and couldn't get down there let alone back up again. He hoped it was the words that counted.

"Princess, will you marry me?"

For one awful moment he thought she would burst into tears. Then she asked, "Being engaged would be considered a relationship?"

"Yes."

She swallowed. "Then I'll answer when the war's over. For now..."

Her arms were round his neck, her head on his shoulder, and it was just as well they were in birdstyle because Mark wasn't at all sure he'd have stayed in control if his hands had been on skin rather than synthetic leather. He rather thought she was crying after all, given her unsteady breathing and the way she trembled in his arms. But she hadn't said no, and she could have done that without violating any regulations at all.

For now, that would have to be enough.


End file.
